Tarot Cards

I have, sitting in front of me, a deck of Tarot cards I bought at a yard sale this weekend for a quarter. By odd coincidence they’d been separated from the book that went with it at a largish church yard sale this past weekend and it wasn’t until I got home that I realized by complete chance I had found both of them.

There are two things I will always buy at yard sales, if they’re $1 or less. One is handwork like embroidered tea towels or dresser scarves or tablecloths. I know that some woman sat with a needle and thread, spent her spare time making something pretty, chose to do that rather than read or sleep or relax, so I pick them up.

The other thing is a decks of Tarot cards. I don’t even bother to see if they’re all there, I don’t care if they are a deck I already have, I have given decks away, too, and over the years have found some interesting decks. Interestingly, I only have one deck that is missing several cards. It’s a very strange deck, sort of Peter Max goes 1971 book cover for your algebra.

I actually find very few duplicates. I probably have three or four decks of Rider Waite decks, because that’s kind of the AOL of Tarot cards – everybody who’s ever been interested has one of those laying around somewhere, but it’s not something you use very often and when you run across it you think, oh, yeah, I do have that, don’t I?

The reason I buy those at yard sales is probably because I’m a little superstitious, for lack of a better word, about them. I’ve been interested in Tarot cards since I was in my teens, and never, in that time, NOT interested in them. It’s never been one of those interests that come and go, I always have a deck of them near my desk, usually a half dozen.

Because I like the cards and I’ve used them for so long, it feels almost sacrilegious to leave them behind. I have walked away from sets that were priced more than $2 or $3, I think because at that point, I figure the person understands they have value.

The deck I bought most recently is the Simply Tarot one and in some ways, it might be the oddest one I have, and that’s saying a lot, because I have some odd decks. This one has taken the traditional images and Photoshoped real faces on to them.

I actually want to write about them more, but it’s later than I thought and morning comes early, so that will have to wait.